The Dollar Prince's Wife (15 page)

 

Lady Dinah Grant didn't think that her husband was Lord God Almighty, but she was pleased to see him when he
returned to Paris to collect her, after the three weeks he had promised her were up.

An old flame of the Marquise's, the Chevalier de Saulx, had been their escort into French society, and Dinah had entered so many houses on the Faubourg Saint Germain that she had become quite dizzy. No one seemed to think it odd that her husband had deserted her after a mere week's honeymoon. One expected Americans to do such things. He was busy making money, no doubt. Love could come later. They were both young, Milady particularly so, it seemed.

Everyone agreed that Milady Dinah, or Milady Grant as she was mostly incorrectly called, was charming in the most original way. She grew even more poised, even more original as the Marquise's lessons continued daily.

When Cobie arrived, she walked towards him with the slightly swaying gait which the Marquise had taught her, dropped her eyelids over her eyes, held out her hand, and greeted him as coolly as though she were a beauty with a score of Seasons behind her.

Cobie bowed over the hand. ‘I must congratulate you, Lady Dinah, on time well spent.'

She answered him in French—she had spoken nothing else since he had left. Those were his instructions, the Marquise had said. ‘He wishes you to be fluent: to speak it as easily as you do English.'

Her French had been that of a schoolgirl, but the intellect which would have made her a scholar was now devoted to perfecting it instead of learning Greek.

‘Another month,' the Marquise had told her, delighted, ‘and you would have been mistaken for a Parisienne.'

She so informed Cobie after Dinah had gone up to
change for dinner. They were all due at the British Embassy. The Ambassador was a friend of both Mr Jacobus Grant and the Marquise de Cheverney. He had already been, like many others, enchanted by Lady Dinah Grant.

Lady Dinah enchanted herself. Like the old woman in the song she constantly asked herself, ‘Can this be I?' She said as much to her husband when she entered the Embassy on his arm.

Cobie looked at her. She was wearing a gown of the palest turquoise silk, shot with amethyst. He had put a tiny pearl and amethyst tiara on her head, an amethyst necklace around her neck, amethysts in her ears and there was a ring for her finger. He had brought them with him from London. It was a Dilhorne tradition that the men of the family always, at some point early in their marriage, bought amethysts for their wives, in memory of the Patriarch, the dynasty's founder, who had bought amethysts for his young wife nearly eighty years ago, in Australia.

Why he had followed the tradition, Cobie didn't know. Particularly since he never openly acknowledged his Dilhorne blood. He was aware that there was constant speculation wherever he went as to who and what he truly was. This amused him, rather than annoyed him, but for the first time he realised that he didn't want such speculation to touch or hurt Dinah.

Those few who had seen old paintings and drawings of the Patriarch could be in no doubt of Cobie's being a Dilhorne. He was a larger, handsomer version of Old Tom, the name his surviving sons sometimes called him when they weren't acknowledging him as the Patriarch.

‘And you are still Lady Dinah Freville inside?' he said, surprising her, once again, by his ability to read her.

‘Yes. Very much so. I cannot believe that I have changed so much in a month.'

‘Clothes, good food, attention, kindness—all these help to transform a person. Yes, you have changed, more than I could have hoped. As much as I could have wished.'

‘You knew that I would.' Dinah's tone was accusing.

‘If you were loved and cared for, yes.'

‘
You
have not loved or cared for me.' Again there was almost accusation in her voice.

‘You don't think so?' he asked her. ‘I thought that you were cleverer than that.'

He was right, of course. So much of what Madame had done, had been done because of his instructions.

Her next question wrung his hard heart a little. ‘Shall I forget it all when next I see Violet?' she asked him simply.

‘No,' he told her. ‘On the contrary. For the first time you will meet her as an equal. Superiority will take a little longer.'

They were walking up a wide stairway now, flunkies bowing them on. At the top they would be received. Once Dinah would have shuddered at the mere notion of doing what she was now doing without thinking. The Marquise and the Chevalier were behind her, both of them lending her their support—but theirs was as nothing, she understood, to that of the man beside her, who was her husband, but not yet her mate.

The new
savoir-faire
which she had learned—and was still learning—informed her that if she wished, she could make him hers at any time and place of her own choice, whenever she pleased. She didn't need him to tell her that now. Once she would have done.

At the top of the stairs she saw the pair of them in a large gilt-framed mirror—and gasped. She was prepared for
her husband's splendour. Evening dress became him as nothing else did. His grace, his elegance, were even more marked in it than in any other costume. But she was not prepared for the sight of herself.

She was his complement in every way. Her dark beauty matched his blond elegance. His bright blue eyes made hers seem the darker. The subtle shades of her gown were enhanced by his midnight hues. But in the confidence of their stance, the way they looked about them, there was nothing to choose between them. The girl who had hunched her shoulders and bent her head lest the world look her in the face had gone.

‘Yes,' Cobie said in her ear. ‘We go well together, do we not?'

She wanted to say, Do you read minds—on top of everything else you can do? But it wasn't necessary for him to read her mind. He had needed only to see them reflected in the mirror, a handsome pair fit to be portrayed by James Tissot, the painter and recorder of aristocratic life.

After that, the night was easy. Dinah had only to pretend that she was in the Marquise's drawing room, the book balanced on her head, making conversation to imaginary aristocrats, ministers, courtiers, and entrepreneurs. At last she was able to convince herself, and everyone else that she had the potential to be Violet's best.

Only when she was alone in the carriage with him, going home, did she allow her shoulders to droop, to become, once again, little Dinah Freville, Violet Kenilworth's unconsidered sister.

Cobie, sitting opposite to her, put a long finger under her chin to push it up. He said briskly, ‘Oh, no, Dinah. When we put on a mask, we must wear it until the play is over. It is not over yet. You must sit up, and entertain me.'

‘Do you wear a mask?' she asked him bluntly, straightening herself, and doing his bidding.

‘Of course. I fancy, though, that I have a larger collection of them than most people do.'

‘What have you been doing in London?'

For some reason the line of conversation she had begun was frightening Dinah a little. She hoped that her question was an innocuous one. She wasn't to know that it was very far from being that.

Cobie thought of Will Walker and laughed to himself a little.

He said, ‘I have been pursuing my business interests.'

He didn't add that he had not been doing so from Southwest Mining and Associates plush offices in the shadow of Saint Paul's, but from the dingy cubby-hole which Mr Dilley had rented.

Nor did he tell her of something else which was on his mind. His meeting with his foster-sister Susanna Winthrop three days ago…

 

Cobie had gone straight home from his encounter with Will Walker and his minions. He had changed back into his usual immaculate clothes at his East End bolt-hole. He walked into the black-and-white flagged entrance hall of his Park Lane home to be met by the butler whom he had hired for the duration of his stay in England.

‘Mrs Winthrop arrived earlier this afternoon, sir. I told her that I had no idea when you would return, but she insisted on waiting. She is in the small drawing room, sir.'

‘Have you sent tea in?'

‘I was about to do so, sir.'

‘See to it immediately. I wish to go to my room before
I attend on Mrs Winthrop. Tell her that I shall be with her in about a quarter of an hour. Send my valet to me.'

Giles had been Cobie's man for the last five years. He was used to his master's vagaries, never asked any questions and kept his mouth commendably shut when newsmen and others tried to pump him about Mr Grant's activities, sexual or financial.

He arrived in Cobie's room to find that his master had his blond head in a bowl of water.

‘You couldn't wait for me, sir?' he asked reprovingly.

‘No, I couldn't, Giles.' Cobie was brisk. ‘I know I have a visitor, but I need to refresh myself before I go to her.'

Washing Walker off himself was his internal gloss. ‘You may assist me now that you are here.'

His hair was sleekly damp when he joined Susanna, who was sitting hunched in an armchair, an untouched tea tray in front of her.

‘Forgive me,' he said. She had sprung to her feet on his entrance. ‘But I have had a difficult afternoon, and had to ready myself before I saw you.'

This was not strictly true. Intuition had told him that he might not like Susanna's errand. The euphoria of having successfully danced Walker and his men around, and of entertaining a group of deprived children had died away, and left him feeling stale and tired, hardly ready to face another problem.

He was sure that it must be a problem which had brought Susanna to him without any preliminary warning, and had kept her waiting for so long, and had caused her to be so agitated at the sight of him.

‘Oh, Cobie,' she exclaimed, and flung her arms around him, hiding her face in his chest. ‘You've no idea how relieved I am to see you.'

Her behaviour would have told him that without her words. The Susanna he had known all his life had always been coolly controlled. There was nothing controlled about her now. She was trembling against him.

Cobie held her away, saying gently, ‘Sit down, Susanna, pour us both some tea, and then tell me what is wrong.'

‘I don't want tea,' she flung at him pettishly, but she sat down all the same, staring at nothing. When he said, ‘Allow me,' and began to organise the tea tray as though he had been doing it all his life, she made no demur, but accepted the cup and saucer from him.

She took a shuddering sip, put it petulantly down, and watched him drink his own tea. Had she been more observant she would have noticed that he was not quite so much in control of himself as he usually was.

‘What is it, Susanna?' he asked her, still gentle.

She put her head in her hands, lifted it to look at him, her eyes full of unshed tears, and said hoarsely, ‘Don't tell me that you don't know, Cobie, you always know everything. It's Arthur.'

‘Arthur?'

He put his cup down, and waited for her to continue.

After a moment, looking away from him, she said, ‘I think that I've always known that there was something wrong, ever since we were first married. But I've always pretended that there wasn't. I looked away, preferring not to know. Safer so, I suppose.' She stopped, began again.

‘Don't ask me for the details, but last night, quite accidentally, I found out the truth I've never wanted to know. All of it. I…can't say it. Don't make me. I'm sure that you know.'

‘Yes,' he told her while she looked blindly away from
him. ‘I've known for a long time. Not always. Not when you first married him, although I never liked him…'

‘God help me, I thought that you were simply jealous when you tried to tell me that I was making a mistake in marrying him. God forgive me, I think…that if…he were straightforwardly perverse, I could almost live with it. But children…Cobie…children, like those people at Madame Louise's recently. I know he used to go there…we haven't been man and wife for a long time… Oh, God, what am I to do?'

She stood up, and said frantically, ‘I must go home. I shouldn't be telling you this, but I thought…I don't know what I thought.'

Cobie was on his feet, too. He went over to her, put an arm around her to comfort her and began to pet her as though she were a small child.

Susanna shuddered again, at the impersonality of it, remembering how differently he had once embraced her.

‘All those years ago I rejected you, because of the difference in our ages. I wouldn't reject you now, Cobie. I wouldn't refuse you now, not now.'

She pulled his head down to kiss him on the lips. ‘Love me, Cobie, and I might be able to survive.'

She looked deep into his eyes, her own tragically brilliant.

He stood transfixed, thinking of how these words would once have moved him, with what joy he would have taken her into his arms, would have married her and bedded her.

To his horror, the very memory of it, combined with the familiar, once so dearly loved scent of her, roused him. For a moment his friendly petting of her became something more, his arms tightened about her, and she turned in them
with a little sigh, as though she were coming home…as though she were his wife…

His wife! He thought of Dinah, being groomed for him in Paris. He pulled away.

‘No!' Susanna pulled him back, put her mouth to his and began to kiss him. She was suddenly seduction itself. She was his first love, his lost love, so long regretted. He tried to hold the memory of Dinah to him, but even so he felt his body responding…he had gone so long without love, and bedding Violet and the others had been no substitute for love.

Susanna thought that she had won. ‘Oh, now, Cobie, now,' she whispered to him, ‘after all these years.'

Her voice called him back from the brink which he was rapidly approaching. He turned away from her, his body one vast ache. The piano was open before him. He dropped both hands on to the keyboard and the dissonance of the chord he had created matched that of his mood.